Imagine we had less Portals?

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

I for example don't consider a filtering/balance team that doesnt do actaul work and, or provide solid alternatives to move forward to be a practical burden upon the developers.

im going to nitpick on this point because it addresses me (and others), and clarify that many of us did actual work, ranging from items to monsters. as well as lots of brainstorming when coders were part of it or involved, not to mention the coding itself.

My apologies, thankyou for that bit of insight.

*edit*

I have little clue about past or current teams. Just reactint to current observations of people wanting said team I mentioned. I already derailed the topic enough so I further appreciate not nitpicking it further.

[Aren]

half of the server

can we stop with the exaggerations? it doesn't make you look brighter, and i think (or at least hope) you know better.
removing one or two of the 3 portals within 2 transitions of the arcane tower wouldn't force anyone to travel """"half the server"""".
removing one of the 3 portals either in or immediately adjacent to bender wouldn't force anyone to travel """"half the server"""".
it would, however, reduce a significant amount of clutter on the portal list, and look a hell of a lot less silly. but we're big on dichotomies, right? why not go all the way and put a portal in every single module area, since it's impossible that there could be too many.
if you disagree, clearly you're selfish because [generic playtime excuse].
(we are allowed to have a discussion. your vitriol is not helpful and is irrelevant to it)

EDIT: clarification

I'm not exaggerating.
This was posted less than four hours after this thread began.



Luckily it was dismissed almost instantaneously. Imagine it hadn't. Imagine, that someone in a whimsical spur of a moment thought: "This is a great idea. Let's remove nearly every portal. It'll be great for immersion!". You think my participation in this thread is vitriolic. It's not. It's trying to make you guys see that your ill-thought out ideas have the potential to negatively affect everyone around you. And I'm trying to point that out. And with your last comment you revealed that of the two of us, you're the one making yourself look worse than you hopefully are.

[xanrael]

Luckily it was dismissed almost instantaneously. Imagine it hadn't. Imagine, that someone in a whimsical spur of a moment thought: "This is a great idea. Let's remove nearly every portal. It'll be great for immersion!". You think my participation in this thread is vitriolic. It's not. It's trying to make you guys see that your ill-thought out ideas have the potential to negatively affect everyone around you. And I'm trying to point that out. And with your last comment you revealed that of the two of us, you're the one making yourself look worse than you hopefully are.

As you can see from my response on the first page I'm in agreement that portals shouldn't be removed and agree that it would kill the fun of others, including myself, just to get that out of the way.

That said, what's all this? It's a fine line to walk saying conflicting opinions are detrimental when discussing server change. I'd suspect a month ago several people wished their conflicting opinions were listened to a bit more on server changes. Likewise sometimes the status quo needs to be changed, prime example being dragonshape and druid/monk synergy a few years ago.

Mind you, I really dislike the idea of removing portals, but I think it's better to discuss it out in the open than not.

[The GrumpyCat]

So let's all be like, nice to each other please? Thanks. The general consensus here it 'we like portals. Let's keep portals. Maybe a few portals could stand to vanish though?'

With a few exceptions, that's mostly what people are saying.

[Apothys]

Just want to clarify, my intention was not to call for the destruction of all Portals, merely to spark a interesting conversation. I find talking about these things and listening to everyones ideas fun and entertaining and a good way to get to know the community outside of Arelith.

However I want to bring up that there seems to be this attitude of people bullying others with passive agressive remarks making them feel they cant bring up any subject for fear of being ridiculed for simply asking a question or being berated for not being as pedantic as they would wish you to be in the format of the question. Now for the people doing this it may seem like nothing, but for myself and maybe others too it can have a negative effect. Okay i know thats slightly of the topic of conversation, but thats how i feel and i dont mean to offend anyone.

[Drowble Oh Seven]

I love the idea of a portal-sparse server, where a journey was an interesting undertaking, with all its own adventures and wonders and hazards.

But I wouldn't trade away the portal system for the world.

The idea's nice, and the ideas and stories that can come out of long journeys are fantastic fun. But Arelith's design just doesn't lend itself well to that. Our PCs are required to travel large swathes of the isle fairly quickly; whether for writs, or settlement RP, or some other flavour of the month. And, mostly, the travel's the least interesting part. You'll pass the same roads, fight the same orcs. It might have been fun the first time; but by the third? The twentieth? If this was a novel, you'd be skimming over. Your eyes would have rolled back up into your head. The author would have made it a one-sentence 'They went.'

Ultimately, to go without portals, you'd need to make travel interesting and exotic, and an adventure in and of itself, rather than just a way to get from A to B. It doesn't matter how pretty an area is (and Arelith has some very pretty areas), it'll dull a bit after the eighth seeing. Like the notion, but I think it's suited to telling a very different sort of story to the ones Arelith currently does.

[Ork]

If you like no portals, come to Skal! There's literally a place you can go in the module to experience this.

[Wuthering]

Two reasons I don't want to walk everywhere.. The default walk speed is pretty slow, it's appropriate for a careful dungeon crawl but not for traveling the same long route you'll see hundreds of times. Maybe if you were given a significant speed boost when on a road I'd feel differently.

And two, area transitions take from 15 seconds to a full minute to load. Crossing ten of them to get from one area to another, especially if you're just seeing if anyone is around on a slow and low population time of day, can be OOC maddening.

Teleportation is hardly a foreign concept to fantasy and it's a big quality of life boost. I'd rather see attractions added to make traveling by road more interesting (wandering merchants, more rare special NPC encounters, expand the courier system to give epics a reason to use it, ??) than take away something so ingrained to the Arelith experience.

[Vrass]

Adding incentives for travel overland rather then by portal, (without removing the portals much) is a good idea actually. Any ideas?

[Halibutthead]

Adding incentives for travel overland rather then by portal, (without removing the portals much) is a good idea actually. Any ideas?

i have ideas, but they would 100% result in people calling me names

[Vrass]

Screw those people then, what are your ideas?